


The heart speaks distinctly

by acaramelmacchiato



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Amis being enormous dorknerds, Combeferre invented accidentally almost sleeping with guest lecturers, Gen, M/M, René Laennec invented the stethoscope, and also kind of pricks, fast writing, incredibly suspect geography, little derpy, nothing happens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2013-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-10 03:20:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/781184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acaramelmacchiato/pseuds/acaramelmacchiato
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the kinkmeme, prompt is: "Combeferre/René Laennec - Because, hey, it's totally plausible that 19/20-year-old Combeferre could've studied at Collège de France under this professor, right?"</p><p>RIGHT. </p><p>In execution: Combeferre's friends piss him off and he almost explores other options, but then doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The heart speaks distinctly

  
“I hope you are not going to tell me that instrument only serves its function when it is inserted somewhere,” said Courfeyrac as Combeferre reassembled it on the table, “or I will directly be compelled to ask you what it is doing still in our company  _in a café_.”  
  
Bossuet, who was bolting a cup of wine on his way out the door for class, choked on a laugh and had to come back inside.   
  
Combeferre cleaned it gently with his handkerchief, giving away nothing, until Courfeyrac’s curiosity had him half out of his seat and Bossuet had given up on class and come in for a closer look.   
  
“Why are you cleaning it?” Courfeyrac asked, his eyes narrow with suspicion. “Unless it is unsanitary?”  
  
“Because it is expensive,” said Combeferre placidly, and went back to it.   
  
Prouvaire, who had spent the week in a mood that required company during his free time but simultaneously required that he ignore everyone, was close at hand but had been staring somewhat distantly out the window. Slowly, his interest was dragged away.   
  
“What is expensive?” he asked, reaching back to his hair as if conversation had a different standard of appearance from contemplation.   
  
Combeferre raised his eyebrows and gestured to the halfway-assembled instrument on the café table he was using as a desk.   
  
“It looks like a crude clarinet,” Prouvaire said, coming over to stare at it over Combeferre’s shoulder. With the nonchalance of someone who was very likely an only child, he plucked Combeferre’s spectacles off his face and held them up to his own eyes like a lorgnette.   
  
“That isn’t going to help you to see,” said Combeferre, and took his spectacles back.   
  
Prouvaire shrugged, and leaned in closer. “If it’s supposed to make music at all, you’ve been swindled.”  
  
“Jehan Prouvaire: cynic,” said Bossuet with a flourishing gesture like he was introducing someone very famous.  
  
“Morbleu,” said Joly, and everyone laughed at him. “You are all being very embarrassing and stupid. It’s a stethoscope.”   
  
“Mor _bleu_ indeed,” said Courfeyrac, still laughing. “And I beg your pardon if that doesn’t quite clear up the mystery surrounding where Combeferre sticks that when he’s alone.”  
  
Above his cravat, Combeferre flushed violently. Jehan put a hand over his mouth, but he was laughing too.   
  
“Don’t you all speak Greek?” said Joly. (“I do  _not_ ,” said Bossuet, offended.) “Take _stethos_ and _skopos_ , and there’s your answer.”  
  
“Well for most of us when we talk about examining a chest we are presumed to be behind a bedroom door, in pleasant company, so I don’t see why we’re being so prim,” Courfeyrac replied.   
  
“It’s used to listen to the heart, isn’t it,” Prouvaire said, with a charmed sigh. “That is extraordinary.”  
  
“So you’ve been at one of M. Laennec’s lectures?” Joly asked Combeferre, drawing in close so he would not have to fight his way out of conversation with Courfeyrac and Bossuet.  
  
“Two, in the past couple of weeks,” Combeferre said quietly, with something close to pride. “And tonight I will accompany him to the Necker-Enfants malades. Therefore I have charge of this stethoscope for the week, and I’m to use it with his supervision.”  
  
Courfeyrac said something crude, and thereafter their conversation erupted into something about diameter and Combeferre was able to return to his own thoughts. 

 

* * *

 

René-Théophile Laennec was a friendly, elegant man in his forties, a Breton who had lived mostly in Nantes, with a diffident wit that delighted as much as it surprised.  
  
Combeferre considered other descriptions: dark-haired and brown-eyed, earnest despite his age and merit. In moments of inactivity he had an expression like an ascetic’s, sleepless and nearly gaunt.   
  
He said that a physician’s time, like a priest’s, belonged properly to the poor who needed him the most, and especially to children.  
  
His height was within a finger’s width or so of Combeferre’s own, and so their eyes met easily and often. When Combeferre made a bad knot tying the medical smock around his waist, M. Laennec retied it with two or three very firm, sure motions and put his hand fondly on Combeferre’s shoulder.   
  
“May I buy you a good glass of wine, sir, when we have finished tonight?” Combeferre asked, when they fell in step behind the sisters who had charge of their itinerary at the hospital.   
  
“I am honored,” said M. Laennec, “but I warn you that I shall pay; you are still a student, M. Combeferre. However exceptional.”  
  
Combeferre felt his face warm. “Thank you, in both cases; I will find a way to settle before you leave Paris.”  
  
M. Laennec smiled again, the slight lines that bracketed his lean face lifting. “What say you promise, when you are a lecturer remembering your old days at the Collège de France, you shall pay for a drink for the most promising young person you are able to befriend? And that will satisfy me."  
  
Combeferre smiled and looked at the floor, schooling his expression before they encountered a patient.   
  
When they had finished at the hospital, and Combeferre had returned his smock to the sisters, for his laundress would not touch medical garb, M. Laennec had a rare and content expression on his face.   
  
“Not so late,” he said, checking his wristwatch. “We should find a good spot outside.”  
  
Combeferre put his notes and his pencil away, and squinted out at the quiet, purple night. “I daresay, the sun is still up.”  
  
“Limit optimism to honesty,” said M. Laennec, with friendly warning. “When I was a student, there was a public house along the rue de la Chanvrerie, whose name escapes me -- it was classical, certainly, and full of what I suspect are your peers, do you know it?”  
  
“The Corinthe,” said Combeferre, with dread.   
  
“Just so!”  
  
“Let’s not,” Combeferre took his spectacles off with nervousness, and after looking through them from a distance he felt useless and put them back on. “Let’s not go there, it must have been better in your day, for now the Corinthe is full of loafers and poets,” in his mind he apologized without real sincerity to Bahorel and Prouvaire, who were likely at the precise moment of his thinking of them, loafing and composing poetry under the roof at the Corinthe.   
  
“I’m afraid I am out of ideas. I am not much for being out in Paris,” said M. Laennec. “Would you be offended if I invited you to my townhouse?”  
  
No one in the medical school knew that he even had a townhouse, thought Combeferre. No one else knew that he was lonely in Paris. No one else knew that he had gone to the rue de la Chanvrerie during his student days.   
  
“On the contrary, sir,” he said, and had to stop himself to swallow, “I would be amazed at your generosity.”  
  
They called for a fiacre and M. Laennec confused himself somewhat with directions to his townhouse, but the driver knew the way despite it, and soon they were off. The location was across the river, and they crossed in some minor traffic at the pont Neuf.

“Let me thank you again,” said Combeferre. “For your instruction and your time -- I know that there are many in London and Brussels and America who would sell their front teeth to be in my place, and I am conscious of the honor.”  
  
M. Laennec smiled, honest and tired, and he leaned forward against the movement of the fiacre so he did not have to raise his voice. “You are a student, so give me the pleasure of correcting you: I benefit from your company. With the exception of publication, when I am in Paris, I find that I am never lonelier. I don’t suppose you know what I mean. You young men are always in such packs like wolves. When you are older you will know that it is possible to be alone, even in Paris.”  
  
“I understand something of that,” said Combeferre. “Today when I was practicing with the cylinder, I could not for my life make my friends understand what the purpose was. They do not understand medicine. They think varyingly that it is somewhere between comforting the dying and performing miracles. And they think that it can be done at regular hours, like a lawyer’s practice.”  
  
A laugh. “You should have more friends in the medical school,” M. Laennec said, and peered out the window where the light of sunset was now absent, and the streetlamps were at half force. “We should turn before the grain exchange, to avoid all this traffic. I find myself thinking that Paris has an abundance of veins and a shortage of arteries -- when I stay in this townhouse it strikes me that the street is barely enough for a single cab to pass.”   
  
As the fiacre passed by, there was light spilling warmly from the rue de la Chanvrerie, and Combeferre felt his throat tighten.   
  
 _When you are a lecturer remembering your old days at the Collège de France_ , M. Laennec had said.   
  
It wouldn’t happen.   
  
In another lifetime, if someone else had fought his battle long before -- then, perhaps, he would breathe freely in Paris and say, yes, when I am a lecturer remembering the old days.  
  
He would make his friends among the medical students, and he would have no hasty explanations for disappearing after his lectures -- poets, he’d said, and loafers, and never in his life had he told a more shameful lie.   
  
“I beg your pardon,” he said, putting his head in his hand. “I am unwell; I am sorry -- I should go.”  
  
M. Laennec looked shocked. “You should come to the townhouse, I will send for --”  
  
“I cannot humiliate myself and be poor company to you, sir, my apartment is just one street north.”  
  
And M. Laennec stopped the fiacre and helped him down, all of his friendliness replaced with an almost pious kindness, and wished him recovered, and promised to call on him in the morning, and Combeferre murmured his address before he realized he had.   
  
Then the fiacre clattered on, and Combeferre straightened his limbs, like someone who had been falling asleep in class and is embarrassed to discover it.  
  
He headed for the rue de la Chanvrerie.  

**Author's Note:**

> Not many notes here WHICH MAKES ME NERVOUS but it's for a kinkmeme so.
> 
> 1\. Title from Laennec's De l'Auscultation Médiate, "I could thereby perceive the action of the heart in a manner much more clear and distinct than I had ever been able to do by the immediate application of my ear." (via wiki OBVIOUSLY)
> 
> 2\. Here's the stethoscope in question: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rene-Theophile-Hyacinthe_Laennec_Drawings_stethoscope_1819.jpg (LOOK IT'S FROM WIKI)
> 
> 3\. HA HA HA Courfeyrac is thirteen years old.
> 
> 4\. Uhm pretend Laennec has an imaginary townhouse northeast of the Forum des Halles, by the Arts et Métiers metro, and that they are zigging north and zagging east and then it all works -- WAIT JUST DON'T THINK ABOUT IT HARD. That's what I did. Or didn't do. Help.
> 
> 5\. Also pretend that there are not five hundred billion places other than the Corinthe where you could go to try to impress dudes half your age.
> 
> 6\. Q: A fiacre isn't different from a coach, why can't you just use the word in English? A: VIVE FANGIRL FRENCH.


End file.
